Having an emergency recall can be invaluable in maintaining the safety of our dogs.
When soundly trained, your dog will stop whatever they’re doing and come running back to you!
Because you will be utilizing classical conditioning (pairing two stimuli together, one right after the other), your dog’s response will be involuntary.
Classical conditioning is also called associative learning, or muscle memory, and is an extremely effective and easy way to train.
It takes a bit of time, but when done correctly, with lots of positive associations, the behavior of coming when called will be strong and reliable.
Step 1
Choose a specific sound (for example, a whistle) that your dog will only hear when you are practicing and using the emergency recall.
Step 2
Give the cue (whistle) once, and then immediately reinforce with a rapid-fire flow of treats – but they must be HIGH-VALUE rewards to create the positive association you want. It doesn’t matter what your dog does at this point; you just want to pair the two together. SOUND = YUMMY TREAT
Step 3
Practice this for a few minutes / several times a day for at least a week.
Step 4
You’re ready to test it out. The key here is to give the whistle cue repeatedly (“beeeep beeeep beeeeep beeeep... ") until your dog comes. This repetition allows the dog to hone in on the sound.
We still want to reinforce every time to keep the behaviors strong. Our ratio of expecting the behavior to be strong without reinforcement is anywhere between 50/1 or 100/1. Meaning, for every 50 to 100 times we practice with treats, we can get away with performing it once without reinforcement.
HINT
For additional support, check out our HONEY of a RECALL handout – same end result, but we use the dog’s name instead of a whistle for our recall cue. We suggest practicing it this way, too, just in case you find yourself needing to get your dog to come back right away, and you don’t readily have the whistle handy!